New Restaurants Opening at SM San Pablo (UPDATED!)

Got a bit of news for San Pablo City residents! We all pretty much know of the major renovation going on at SM and guess what... we're getting a whole bunch of restaurants not seen in the city yet!

Here's a list I've confirmed so far:

1. Starbucks
2. Tokyo Tokyo
3. Gerry's Grill
4. Yellow Cab Pizza
5. Ramen Sora
6. Bon Chon Chicken

Yeah! If you know of any other restaurants opening there soon, please leave a comment!

Jollibee's Plus Meals

I have to say, Jollibee's Corned Beef is pretty good. Comparable to even Purefoods and Delimondo. Sometimes, I even prefer it. But the problem with Jollibee's corned beef is that often times it doesn't seem like it's enough. I've finished the whole thing and I'm still hungry. Of course, I can order another one, but I really don't need additional rice, drink and egg. In fact, I really don't like the way they do eggs because they often overcook it.

Ilyn recently discovered that you can actually order extra corned beef. Just the corned beef. An additional order (Plus One) is P44. Two additional orders (Plus TWO) is P88. I'm like WOAAAH. All of a sudden, I'm ordering this A LOT for breakfast. A regular order of Corned Beef (around P100), and Plus Two Corned Beef and you get this huge pile of corned beef for only P188. And I no longer walk away hungry. If I can walk at all.

This is applicable to their other breakfast items like Tapa and Hotdog.

Thanks Jollibee!!

(THIS IS NOT A SPONSORED POST haha!)

The Best Steak in San Pablo City

Me and Ilyn were fortunate enough to be invited to try out the menu of a restaurant being developed by friends here in San Pablo City. It's actually already semi-open, but not yet for the general public. It started out as a simple cafe for customers of a spa, but they're now trying to expand it into a full blown restaurant/art gallery.

The owner clearly not only loves cooking but is dedicated to providing the best they could possibly offer.

Our meal started out with an appetizer consisting of wheat pandesal with olive oil/balsamic vinegar dip. I didn't finish it because I didn't want to be full before I finished our meal. I did finish the salad which came next, which consisted of lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, baby arugula, candied walnuts, grapes, and orange. I liked it because it was different from the kinds of salad usually served in San Pablo restaurants (to be honest, I'm kind of tired of Ceasar and Greek salads) and it was very light and refreshing.

Next came Potato soup with croutons. Like the salad, it was very light and of an appropriate amount that didn't threaten to overwhelm the main dish, which was the steak.

The steak was an 8oz Rib Eye cooked medium rare which comes with gravy and mashed potatoes or rice. This, as far as I know, the only restaurant in San Pablo which serves steak specifying weight and one of the few that allows you to choose doneness. For example, you cannot specify doneness with Si Christina's steak. It comes in only one: well done. When I tried it, I was disappointed because it came out as super well done (meaning burnt). For a price tag of more than P1000, I think they could do a better job and get a better quality steak. You can choose doneness with Simple Treat's steak, but it's so thin sometimes it doesn't matter if you choose medium rare because it comes out as well done no matter what.

This 8oz Rib Eye was perfectly medium rare, and it's the softest steak I ever had, not only in San Pablo, but in the Philippines. The only thing that came close to the softness of this is the Filet Mignon I had at Donovan's in San Diego. I wish I could say it's the best steak I ever had, but this comes as a close second. The best steak I had was also served in this place a few weeks ago when they were trying out a much bigger Rib Eye, US Prime Angus Steak, 1 and a half inches thick and done medium rare. That was just incredible, and we're grateful that we were asked to try it. They will try to add it to their menu soon. I don't know how expensive that steak will be (I think it will be very expensive), but the 8oz Rib Eye they served us was P795. For that price, I guarantee it will be worth it. It's the best steak you can have at that price.

The meal was closed out with a desert of mini blueberry muffins, cinnamon roll, and a pot of hot Secret Garden red tea.

The entire meal cost P1,100, which is very much worth it, in my opinion.

Classic Palabok at Amboy's, San Pablo City

The Jollibee palabok is probably representative of a more common palabok dish where bihon is used. I much prefer the thicker noodles found at Amboy's, which to me is the more classic version. In this case, there's hardly any difference at all between Pancit Palabok and Pancit Luglug,

Palabok commonly has a thick shrimp sauce, some bits of pork (or in Amboy's case, bits of chicharon), hard boiled egg, green onions. Amboy's version (P25) is probably the best I've tasted in San Pablo. I like it even more than the more expensive and much hyped Pancit Luglug from Razon's (P109).

SanPellegrino Aranciata Sparkling Beverage

I'm a big soda fan, I have to admit. Apart from ice cold water when I'm incredibly thirsty, soda is my go to drink of choice. Yeah, I tried to go alcoholic. I've had a few drunken binges to prove it. But there's no alcoholic beverage that I prefer more than an ice cold soda immersed in lots of ice.

Once in a while I'd see a soda drink that I haven't seen before and I'll try it. I've known of San Pellegrino sparkling beverages for a while from things I've read online. But I actually haven't seen one locally until recently. I saw these two, "Limonata" and "Aranciata" from Marketplace by Rustan's at BGC the other day and I grabbed them right away. I was thinking FINALLY. I'll be able to taste these bad boys!

Call it "sparkling" all you like Pellegrino, but it's all soda to me. Yeah, SOFTDRINKS. Calling it "Sparkling Beverage" is like calling comics "graphic novels". It's all the same to me.

Shuddering with excitement, I opened Aranciata first, poured it on ice and prepared myself for whatever was to come. And what came was...

WTF. This tastes like Sunquick.

That said, I love Sunquick. It's a childhood orange drink that my mom would always pack in my bag with my snacks for school. I grew up with it. I love it.

It's just disorienting that a product that's marketing itself as a classy softdrink would taste exactly like my childhood orange drink.

On the bright side, I guess I don't have to buy such an expensive can of Pellegrino Aranciata to taste it. I'll just mix Sunquick with a can of Schweppes soda water and I'll have the exact same thing.

Thanks Sunquick!

Authentic Kulawo at Sulyap Gallery Cafe

I have to say it straight away. Nobody cooks Kulawo better than my aunts and uncles back in Sta Catalina (Sandig), here in San Pablo. Their kulawo has a very earthy, very countryside flavor that can't be replicated here at home or found at restaurants.

That said, the next best thing is Sulyap Gallery Cafe's version at Brg. Del Remedio, Cocoland Compound, San Pablo City.

There are two types of kulawo that's made here. One is made from eggplant and the other is made from banana hearts, the latter being my favorite.

We ordered Sulyap's version of the banana hearts kulawo, which comes with a generous helping of awesome, awesome grilled pork belly. We had also ordered their eggplant version previously which is also very good, but I just really love the banana hearts one.

If you haven't tasted kulawo yet, it's basically the aforementioned main ingredients cooked with vinegar, onion and coconut milk squeezed from toasted coconut meat shavings. The authentic way is to put the shavings into a metal pot, throw in some live coconut coals and just let it burn the shavings. After that's done, remove the remaining coals, let it cool and then squeeze the milk from it. It is quite unlike anything you've tasted before.

Another thing we ordered was their Ginatang Sugpo, or large shrimp cooked in coconut milk. It's pretty common to have so much food cooked with coconut milk here in San Pablo due to the abundance of coconut. Sulyap's version is very very good. It's just like how your mom would make it.

Any visitors to San Pablo wishing to taste authentic Southern Tagalog dishes ought to head to Sulyap Gallery Cafe, not only for the food, but for the incredible ambiance. Their dining rooms are spread out among restored Spanish style houses nestled in beautiful gardens. None of the dining areas are air conditioned but it's so pretty and so oozing with history and culture that you wouldn't mind.

Sulyap is not only a place you can eat, but they also have rooms available if you want to stay overnight. They have a pool, and they have a museum! This is truly one of the must visit places whenever you go to San Pablo City.

Sulyap Gallery Cafe's website:
http://www.sulyap.net/

Wonderful Lunch at Mio Cucina, Los Baños

Whenever Ilyn and I want to go out on a "special" date, but don't feel like going to Tagaytay or Manila, we opt for Mio Cucina located in Los Baños. It really is one of the best restaurants in that town, bar none. It's a very small, very pretty restaurant from the inside. It also feels very homey and cozy and it's the perfect place to bring a date to.

For a small, quaint restaurant, it also a bit classy without being alienating. And although the food is generally something you see from other Filipino-themed restaurants, the quality of the food is so much better. We've ate here for many times now, trying different things and we have yet to be really disappointed.

Any meal comes with free appetizer (picture above) which includes Bonete and a variety of spreads. The last time we were here one of the spreads was something called "Sinantolan" made from finely chopped and mashed santol but santol might not be in season so we got butter and some kind of tomato salsa. It's very light in flavor and in the stomach. What more from an appetizer can I ask for? Some restaurants go crazy with their appetizers that it makes you quite full by the time your main meal arrives.

For our salad, we ordered Ensaladang Ampalaya (P165). Normally we would order Ensaladang Pako, but it was unavailable so we chose this instead. But having had Pako before, in the back of my mind I wanted to try something else so I was glad that it wasn't available. And it's a good thing too because this Ampalaya salad was just excellent. Not too many people know how to prepare Ampalaya right. People complain that it's too bitter, but it's only because it wasn't prepared properly. This Ampalaya, if I'm not mistaken, was pickled so it's a bit sweet. Combined with the tomato and kesong puti, it was so nice that I finished half of this in no time at all.

Feeling a bit hungry, I actually ordered another appetizer. This one is called Crispy Squid (P285). I wanted to try something else because I was a bit tired of the usual mushroom and garlic or the breaded calamares. I didn't know what to expect when I ordered this from the menu. It's a bit pricey but it's an experiment. Who knows, I might like it. And I did! The first bite of this was amazing. It's crispy because it's coated in caramelized sugar, which makes it tastes a little bit like dilis, but with that unmistakable squid flavor. Although I absolutely loved this, it's something I could not eat a lot of.  Medyo nakakaumay, would be the Tagalog term for it.

Ilyn's main dish is the Tortang Talong (P165). We were surprised when it arrived as a pair. As was usual with Mio, any traditional dish is usually elevated in quality, but this Torta might have been the exception. It was good, but there was nothing extra special about it. It tastes very much like other eggplant tortas we have had in other places, including here at home.

My main dish (which I can't seem to take a decent photo of) is the Hito in Coconut Milk (P225). Hito or Catfish is a favorite fish of mine. Ilyn hates it though. I usually have it grilled or fried, but rarely cooked in coconut milk. I had it once like that here at home and it was so fatty. I wanted to try and see how Mio prepares it.

And Mio surprised me again by how good it was. No, it was excellent. The flavor is very subtle, which is a quality that I like in any dish. It's not fatty at all, which is good. I finished all of it and ended up looking for more.

If you are looking for a nice place to have a date with your special someone and you're in the area, I wholeheartedly recommend Mio Cucina. They have this little cove inside their little restaurant that's perfect for couples. It's intimate and the food is really good. I recommend that you call for reservations though, because it does tend to become full at certain times. You can call them at (049)5363311. They're located behind Community Cable, 10395 Lopez Ave, on the left side going to UPLB.